As the TF 714 commander in operational control of the Rangers, but not tasked with administrative communication with the family, I had an incomplete view of all that transpired. But in Afghanistan I watched the Rangers deal with the loss of a comrade, and I saw nothing but genuine efforts to take care of a fallen Ranger and his family in ways that reflected the deep values of the force.
I learned later that the family was not immediately notified of the possibility of friendly fire. From the beginning, I assumed they would be notified of the ongoing investigation into the possibility of fratricide, but I believed final determination would not be publicly announced beyond the family until the investigation’s conclusions were final. From experience with how long investigations typically took, I knew that the investigation’s findings were likely to be complete after the planned memorial service.
The initial phone call I made, and the message I transmitted, only days after Pat Tillman’s loss, reflected my intent to fully inform the multiple commands and commanders who would be involved in administrative matters associated with Corporal Tillman’s death.
Concerns were raised over wording in the Silver Star narrative, which some found misleading as to the reason for Tillman’s death. Before this, I had seen Silver Star citations carefully framed and proudly hung on walls of homes I’d visited. In the citation, we thus sought to document what I believe was his heroism, without drawing official conclusions about friendly fire that were still premature. Any errors, which I should have caught, were not the result of any intention to misrepresent or mislead. I believed that the fact that Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire, a sad reality in every war, did not diminish either his service or his sacrifice.
To this day, I am saddened by Ranger Tillman’s death, as I am for the loss of every service member I served with, and for the pain such losses cause each family.
* * *
I was back in Baghdad in late May when Scott Miller knocked on the plywood doorframe to my office. “Sir, I’ve got the Berg video,” he said, and handed me a DVD. Prior to this, there had been a spate of kidnappings. But Nicholas Berg had recently become the most infamous victim because of what was on the DVD Scott brought me. Berg was a twenty-six-year-old from Philadelphia who had come to Iraq to repair telephone towers, moving alone throughout the country that spring. He was kidnapped on April 10, as kidnappings started to occur more frequently that summer. By the time Scott came to my office, I had received reports that Berg had been executed on camera. Soldiers had found his body under an overpass in Baghdad, and the video of his execution had been uploaded to a jihadist website. As I loaded the DVD, Scott sat down across from me. He shook his head.
“Sir, I don’t think he knew it was coming. As he was sitting in front of those guys, I don’t think he had a clue that he was going to be beheaded.”
After weeks of intelligence updates and briefs from our hostage cell, I had come to know quite a bit about Nick Berg. So there was a flash of familiarity as his image came up on the screen. In the video, he appeared in an orange jumpsuit in front of five men clad in black, their heads covered. Intelligence sources told us the bulky man in the center was Zarqawi. After delivering a diatribe to the camera, he removed a long knife from the black folds of his shirt and tipped the shackled Berg over onto his side. His henchmen held Berg down until it was finished. Even though I knew the outcome, at the end of the video I had to consciously relax my clenched hands.
By virtue of our close-quarters fight with Al Qaeda, our force began to see a lot of these videos. War drives strong emotions. American outrage over the Alamo produced the Texan victory at San Jacinto but also the brutal pursuit and killing of hundreds of Mexicans attempting to flee the defeat. During the Second World War, Fleet Admiral Halsey, one of only nine officers to ever wear five stars, placed a billboard in the entrance to one of his harbors in the Pacific that said, “Kill Japs, Kill Japs, KILL MORE JAPS!” Frustrated by the suicidal tactics of the insurgents in the Philippines, John Pershing, another man the United States eventually awarded five stars, buried the corpses of his Muslim enemies with pig carcasses. These and similar moments from our military’s past were on my mind as the enemy in Iraq appeared ever more sinister.